Peter Harrison offers a new assessment of the religious foundations of scientific knowledge. He shows how the new approaches to the study of nature that emerged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were directly influenced by theological debates about the Fall of Man and the extent of the damage suffered by the mind and senses from this original event. According to his estimation, scientific methods were initially invented as techniques for restoring the epistemic damage caused by the ancestral sin. In its conception, modern science was conceptualized as a means of recovering the knowledge of nature that Adam once possessed. Contrary to the prevailing view that sees science emerging through its conflict with religion, Harrison argues that theological discussions were vital in shaping the new scientific method.